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TAXILA, Aug 31: Wah Cantonment police on Friday preempted a major terrorist attack on the garrison city when they in a pre-dawn swoop arrested three Afghanis from a graveyard and seized huge explosive material.

Talking to Dawn here on Friday, the sub-divisional police officer, DSP Raja Taifoor Akhter, said that acting on a tip-off a police party raided a graveyard in Bodo village near Wah Cantonment and arrested Hijratullah, Najeebullah and Habibullah of Paktia province of Afghanistan.

He said the explosives included detonators, remote controls, bomber’s vests, nuts, bolts, shrapnel, hand grenades and other bomb-making material.

The DSP said that during preliminary interrogation the terrorists confessed to planning an attack on a mosque of garrison city during Friday prayers.

However, according to sources security in the area was on high alert for the past four days after intelligence that eight terrorists had entered the city.

Sources said when police raided the graveyard two suspected terrorists managed to escape. Over 79 employees of Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) were killed and over 120 injured in twin suicide blast in the city on August 21, 2008.

Meanwhile, An Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) of Rawalpindi on Friday gave the suspected terrorists into police custody on a five-day physical remand.